registrars Who is the best registrar in the business?

matj said:

Uniregistry for me.

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Probably the best control panel of them all. But not the cheapest prices. Or depth of services, like NameSilo.

stub said:

Probably the best control panel of them all. But not the cheapest prices. Or depth of services, like NameSilo.

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Happy with my $8.67 renewal prices, and so far, their customer support has been fantastic.

matj said:

Happy with my $8.67 renewal prices, and so far, their customer support has been fantastic.

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That's expensive for me. And with a large portfolio, price is very important. And their prices are non-negotiable. Which I accept without any qualms.

stub said:

You can't beat NameBright's at cost, registrations/renewals.

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And that is $ 8.03 ?

stub said:

But my personal favorite is Dynadot. Cheap prices, if you belong to one of their plans. Great Support.

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I have used godaddy, namecheap and namesilo, but lastly mostly dynadot. I like dyndot a lot, I find their interface intuitive and effective, kinda opposite of godaddy.

I didn't know about their plans. How cheap is renewals?

JB Lions said:

I have 99%+ .com and renewals at GoDaddy (with being in the club) are $8.47 for me.

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Well I didn't know godaddy could be that cheap. Combine it with a massive and very active marketplace. Now it actually makes a lot more sense to me that some people consider them the best.

DzAH said:

Well I didn't know godaddy could be that cheap. Combine it with a massive and very active marketplace. Now it actually makes a lot more sense to me that some people consider them the best.

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Looks like they came back, now up 30 votes. It's kind of looking like the last poll. Basically domainers like these 5 the best:

GoDaddy
Namesilo
Namecheap
Dynadot
Uniregistry

What about epik ? I'm considering to move everything to them, much because of their cheap escrow. Makes a lot of sense to use them as the main registrar for a portfolio.

Namecheap ☺

DzAH said:

And that is $ 8.03 ?



I have used godaddy, namecheap and namesilo, but lastly mostly dynadot. I like dyndot a lot, I find their interface intuitive and effective, kinda opposite of godaddy.

I didn't know about their plans. How cheap is renewals?

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Purely on price. You cannot beat NameBright's cost price. On a regular basis.

If you deposit $500 at Dynadot your price for registration and renewals is $8.75. If you deposit $5000 the price is $8.50. You have to spend the deposit within a year to keep your rate. They don't confiscate your money if you don't reach these limits, but your reg price will go back to whatever price your spending limit is at. You don't need to deposit. You can simply buy at the normal rate until you reach the next level. Hence it's better to deposit because you get the lower price immediately.

DzAH said:

Well I didn't know godaddy could be that cheap. Combine it with a massive and very active marketplace. Now it actually makes a lot more sense to me that some people consider them the best.

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I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of their votes have never used any other registrars. They don't even have email support unless you have an account manager. Which needs 300+ domains in your account. I've read a lot of complaints about their telephone support being with kids who only just about know what a domain is, and don't really have any clue how to resolve any particular situation. Including the giving of wrong information. I also understand the phone lines can be a long wait, in the US.

But personally. Not being from the US was a bonus. I called their local support and was immediately forwarded to the US, jumped any long telephone queue, and was put in touch with the very knowledgeable person who resolved my (I thought difficult) problem in 2 minutes flat. When I put down the phone, I asked to myself. What just happened?

An interesting question. I'd say that one-and-only best registrar for all users simply does not exist.

There are so many things to consider:

Non-U.S. user is always more safe with non-U.S. registrar.

One should not forget that most complaints, udrps etc. are originated from the United States of America, it is very easy for such complainants (~$150 filling fee) to sue non-U.S. registrant in U.S. court with or without reason if the complainant wants to obtain a valuable domain which belongs to non-U.S. registrant, and (!) if the domain is registered with U.S.-based registrar. It is not happening too frequently because of greedy corporate lawyers who prefer to avoid such a cheap method, nothing else. However, if non-US domain owner registered his valuable domain name with non-US registrar, it would become somewhat more hard to sue them in the United States (of course there is an option to use Virginia court for com/net domains as verisign registry is located in Virginia, so the domain name is also technically located there, but it is another story).

The above does not apply to US-based domain owners, as they are already in mentioned country and can be easily sued regardless of registrars location.

For an enduser based outside U.S., I would recommend EasyDns registrar. They are Canadians, reasonably safe to use, easy control panel etc, and they would not shut the domain name down just because somebody emailed them asking to do so ("hello, we are London police, please disconnect the following domains"). There were such cases. Most registrars promptly complied - Indian Bigrock, many U.S.-based registrars, but not EasyDns. No order from Canadian court = no action.

For an enduser based inside U.S., I would recommend NameSilo of course, but if and only if the user is technically advanced. NameSilo has soo many cool professional features that an average enduser may be lost. A next development step of this no doubts the best U.S.-based registrar might be introducing two types of accounts/interfaces - simplified for an enduser and professional(current) for a domainer or reseller.

Uniregistry? Also an option, because of safe Cayman jurisdiction. I wish they could improve their marketing team though, I feel I still need some "psychological recovery" (or a lot of beer) after they sincerely promoted .xyz(!) on the 1st page and by email like the next big thing similar to bitcoin... And I never know what image will I see next time I visit uniregistry. Ok, at least there is no dancing Jean-Claude Van Damme (who was dancing on GoDaddy a few years ago for a couple of weeks or so).

GoDaddy? Please return Danica Patrick . It is boring to see the same no-named guy with headphones, for many months, each time I'm going to login page. With a dedicated account manager (and only with a manager) GoDaddy is OK. Or with @Joe Styler who is always here to help, thank you so much Joe for being a member of this forum

As a curiosity, I performed SSL/https security server checks using industry standard ssltest by ssllabs.com , for all registrars listed in the poll.

The resulting ranking indicates quality of secure https implementation. A+ means increased ranking which rewards exceptional configurations, normal rankings are from A (all fine) to F.

In most (but not all) cases, the results are the same for all (if any) sub-domains used by the registrar. For example, 101domain.com has login area at "my.101domain.com" and both "101domain.com" and "my.101domain.com" are equally ranked as A+, so below I included it just once under the main domain (101domain.com). To the contrary, secure login area of Fabulous.com registrar is ranked differently, so I included Fabulous registrar twice.

The most unusual case is godaddy. The domain name godaddy.com itself is shown as having two IP addresses and those IPs are ranked differently by ssllabs. I cannot explain what it means, so simply copying below. It also said "Warning: Inconsistent server configuration" after testing godaddy.com

The results are the following. They reflect an opinion of ssllabs bot at the time of this writing.

A+
101domain.com
epik.com
moniker.com

A
domain.com
dotster.com
internetbs.net
namebright.com
namecheap.com
namepal.com
namesilo.com
networksolutions.com
registrar.epik.com (login page)
rebel.com
uniregistry.com

A-
enom.com
dynadot.com
hover.com
name.com
godaddy.com ( under IP 104.238.65.160 )
fabulous.com

B
godaddy.com ( under IP 208.109.192.70)
register.com

F
secure.fabulous.com

I use internetbs.net, I am outside US, so are they. So thats my main goal. To be as far away from US as possible.

Also internetbs.net has sedo MLS integration and in few weeks also Afternic premium network integration.
Thats also very important.

Free whois protection. Wire transfer. And some other cool features. And price is also good if you have over 2000 domains.

And also have personal connection to the manager, who takes care of my problems.

As for the ssl rating I copypasted.... For the sake of clarity, before posting it on public forum (even though all these details are already public, available to any interested person and are routinely scanned by tons of bots, the same bots that scan our parked domains), I carefully checked the reasons why each particular registrar was downgraded from A or A+ to lower ratings. There is no real evidence showing that any domain registered with lower-rated registrar is in practical danger, both in general, and with modern browsers and/or 2FA in place especially. It _might_ be the case with some other downgrade reasons, such as using server software dated back to 1992, but it is not why mentioned downgrades occured.

So, the above rating indicates just one thing - how "advanced" the technical team at each partcular registrar is, whether they care of applying all routine server patches in timely fashion, etc.

SSL relies on a range of ciphering algorithms. Each webserver can use a different set, it's something that you can configure in the Apache config file. A few are broken/downgraded and should no longer be used. A few are so weak that they could even permit MITM attacks.
That can explain differences in ranking.

A+ indicates that the technical team is more likely to be on top of things. Or that they applied a default but recommended (and recent) configuration...

I am always surprised how much Register.com has dropped the ball over the last 15+ years.

Back in the late 1990s early 2000s they were the big dog but years of high prices and bad customer service especially when transferring out has hurt them.

They could have been Godaddy.

Each to their own..
I really don't like Godaddy's UI, really really don't.
I've been with quite a few, including Dynadot, Godaddy, name.com, etc

I still prefer namecheap, especially with the improvements they've made recently. Sure there are some urks here and there, but the UI is at least sane, predictable, and has enough bells and whistles to make it usable.

tonyk2000 said:

As a curiosity, I performed SSL/https security server checks using industry standard ssltest by ssllabs.com , for all registrars listed in the poll.

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Isn't this a function of the hosting rather than the registrar?

I would think most registrars are also webhosts and host their own websites.
And even if they are outsourcing the hosting they still should pay attention to those details. After all, they usually sell SSL certs too... They also collect credit card numbers and lots of personal data.

Kate said:

I would think most registrars are also webhosts and host their own websites.
And even if they are outsourcing the hosting they still should pay attention to those details. After all, they usually sell SSL certs too... They also collect credit card numbers and lots of personal data.

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I don't know the percentage of people who use the same registrar as web hosting. But despite the warnings about not having your registration and hosting with the same company. A lot of people still do it. My web host offers me free AutoSSL certificates for all my domains (which I thought came with cPanel hosting). It's mostly good enough for my needs.

I am an investor so I HAVE TO USE Godaddy! It doesn't mean that I want to LOL (Every other commercial on TV here in the US is the stupid Godaddy website builder commercial )
Why do I have to use Godaddy? Afternic integration, expired domain market, credibility with clients, pretty good support , bc they spend crazy money on ADs to build their brand etc etc
For all my handregs I use NameSilo because they are no frills , no addons,no drama!

uniregistry and godaddy for me. Both have good support, competitive reseller prices and good marketplace integration.

Definitely NameCheap, I can't even imagine why people vote for GoDaddy at all.

Krum said:

Definitely NameCheap, I can't even imagine why people vote for GoDaddy at all.

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I share that same opinion on Namecheap, I have been too lazy to move what domains I have there away from them, but I honestly see nothing special about them. And they do one thing I despise, they remove names that can still be renewed and you have to contact live chat and manually renew. I am fine if I missed renewing a name, my fault, but leave the name there for everyday where I can renew at regular renewal, non redemption.

Krum said:

NameCheap

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All I need to know is that they have ANY association with enom whatsoever. That's enough for me to steer very clear of them.